


The future is hers to write

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen, not as angsty as the summary would suggest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11109156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: Two years and thousands of miles lie between Ana and the war, and yet the nightmares follow her anyway. But she's not the only one with dreams that keep her up at night.





	The future is hers to write

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MelyndaR](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/gifts).



Ana wakes alone and shivering in the dark, heart thumping madly in her chest. It’s the same dream as always; she knows it from beginning to end and it shouldn’t still shake her like this. After they moved out to California, the nightmares had lessened in frequency somewhat and she thought perhaps that would be the end of it—until she had been shot, and suddenly they came roaring back. She doesn’t like to burden Edwin with such things, though of course it’s hardly a secret.

At any rate, her husband is away with Mr. Stark, assisting with a government defense contract of some sort off in the Channel Islands. They won’t be back until morning. She hugs his pillow and breathes in his scent, and it helps the shivers subside. Dawn is still hours away and she knows she should try to sleep.

But she lies there in the dark and listens to the clock tick away and a million thoughts race through her head. Finally she decides she doesn’t really want to go back to sleep anyway, so she gets out of bed, puts on her robe, and heads to the kitchen.

It surprises her to see that the light is already on and Miss Carter is seated at the table, gazing out the window. She looks up at Ana with a tired smile. “I’m so sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Not at all,” Ana says. “I had a dream and couldn’t fall back to sleep.”

“You and I both. Shall I make tea?” Miss Carter asks, but it seems that she sees something in Ana’s face that makes her change her mind: “Or…perhaps something stronger?”

That sounds very good indeed. “Mr. Stark has an excellent selection of scotch.” Ana pulls the bottle and a pair of glasses out of the cabinet wonders what sort of dream has her friend up at this hour. She hadn’t been certain that Miss Carter would stay in Los Angeles after the Isodyne case, but Edwin had seemed confident she would. Of course he was right, and Ana is glad for it.  

Miss Carter pours out a generous amount of liquor for both of them and Ana knocks the scotch back in a single gulp. The alcohol burns her throat. She toys with the empty glass and waits for Miss Carter to speak, but she doesn’t—just sits there and sips her own drink. She’s waiting for her to say something first, Ana realizes.

But how do you speak of the unspeakable? Even to Edwin, there are certain things she has never been able to articulate. Ana had come of age as the entire world was crashing down around her; listened as people she had known all her life shouted in glee and smashed the windows of her parents’ shop while she hid in the back with her sisters; saw her family and friends separated and lost and was helpless to stop it; witnessed the dissolution of the future she had imagined for herself.

And yet she had survived. She found love and friendship where she had least expected it. She built a new life for herself in this strange, vast, beautiful country. She wasn’t always sure if she deserved it, and there were days when she couldn’t shake the terrible suspicion that the past two years had been an illusion and the rug was about to be pulled out from under her when she least expected. And the nightmares had followed her too.

Maybe one day she’ll be ready to talk about these things, but not yet. “Did my husband ever tell you of our first days in New York?” she says instead, and Miss Carter shakes her head. “My English was still very bad back then, so I signed up for a language class in the city. Edwin dropped me off and left to run some errands for Mr. Stark, but it turned out the class had been rescheduled. So I decided to take a walk while I waited for him to come back.

“Of course I became terribly lost, and I wasn’t confident enough in my English to ask strangers for directions. It was a hot day, so finally I stopped to buy a snow cone. As luck would have it, the seller was my old neighbor! Imagine the odds—thousands of miles from our country, after everything our people had endured—still we found each other. We cried and cried.

“At that moment, Edwin came tearing around the corner in Mr. Stark’s car and nearly hit my neighbor’s cart. I gave the poor man a terrible fright—he was certain I had been kidnapped! But I introduced him and bought him a snow cone, and all was well.”

To her surprise, she sees tears welling up in Miss Carter’s eyes. “And what became of your neighbor?” she asks.

“I call her every week. She’s still in New York. Her son survived the war and came to live with her last year.” They saved every penny and just in the past month, they were able to open their own store on the Lower East Side. The son married and he and his new wife are expecting their first child in the fall.

It gives Ana reason to hope. There have been difficult times, to be sure; days and sometimes weeks in which loss threatens to overwhelm her and she’s barely able to keep despair at bay. But what Ana remembers in these moments is that she and her neighbor were both given a second chance, and that was more than most people got. And so she can forgive herself just a little bit for all her doubts and fears. The past is the past and cannot be changed. But she will remember it even though it hurts sometimes. She will keep it, and despite it all she will live joyfully and do good things, because the future is hers to write. 

She stays up with Miss Carter and they share stories until the sun begins to peek shyly over the horizon and the birds start to chirp, until at last they hear the car pulling up in the driveway and Edwin and Mr. Stark step through the door. Ana doesn’t wait. She runs to her startled husband, throws her arms around him, and kisses him, and he laughs and drops the luggage, picks her up, and spins her around. Morning has arrived.


End file.
